How I saved America, 7/31/11 edition.

The primary actors in the American economy are the citizens, corporations, and the government.  Of these, only the citizens have an absolute vested interest in the outcome.  Corporations will cross borders as necessary.  Government doesn’t care, they just tax as necessary, and they have the resources to collect.  Only we citizens have no recourse if the welfare of our Nation and our economy falter.

So today, I saved America.  I needed a new pair of athletic shoes.  I walk a lot, and I have two volunteer jobs where neat, white athletic shoes are appropriate attire.  I like walking shoes because I don’t run, and walkers are more comfortable for standing in.  So I used my US dollars to buy a pair of these:

 

Click here for the link!  Those “Made in USA” 812 walking shoes are $104.  If that’s too much, they sell the very similar 577 that is “Assembled in USA” for $61.  I have a pair of ancient 812’s that I’ve probably walked a thousand miles in.  They are completely worn out, but the innersole still has its shape, has not broken down, and although they look like doo-doo, they’re still very comfortable.  New Balance is a very cool company that is creating jobs for Americans in America.  When it comes to athletic shoes, they get ALL of my business.  The coolest thing they’ve started offering is a “design your own shoe” option.  You design the shoe, they build it, and ship it to you in 4-8 days.  Click here to design your own shoe!

I figure that purchase created a job for an American, in America, for about 30 minutes today.  If 15 of my fellow Americans also bought a pair of 812’s, then together our shopping created a job for an American for an entire day.  This is how We The People save America, one pair of shoes at a time.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

There is no debt crisis …

… except the crisis being manufactured by the Executive, specifically the Treasury.  So we’re about out of accounting tricks (never thought I’d see the federal government run out of accounting tricks).  We’re about to run out of money to pay all our bills.  So the entire Left side of America is in a flurry, sensationalist headlines and general stupidity abound.

This situation has come up many times in the past, and there are ways to deal with it.  In California­, this was a way of life for state employees and beneficiar­ies.  The state simply issued IOU’s, which the banks were happy to accept and credit on deposit.  When the budget finally got passed, the banks redeemed the IOUs and life went on.

This impasse isn’t nearly as bad as past crises since the federal government has the authority to spend, and has revenues coming in. The federal government can make full payments on the debt, which we have to do because we have to borrow to survive (How’s that sound to you? Does that sound OK?).  And the federal gov’t has enough revenues left over to pay about 57% of all remaining obligation­s.

So here’s what they do: pay 57% of “everything else” in cash, and issue warrants for the remaining 43%, or whatever. People who receive warrants can hold them and collect 2.5% interest until the federal government fixes itself, or they can deposit them with banks.  I guarantee you that the banks will gladly credit the individual’­s account with the funds, hold the warrants,  and then redeem them (for principle plus interest) when the federal government fixes itself.

Gheeeesh.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

PS:  I had a reader challenge this idea, saying it’s circular.  His claim was that issuing IOU’s itself creates debt.  I disagree.  There is no net inflow of money from a third party that would require a liability entry on the books.  Issuing warrants is simply stating in writing that the federal government acknowledges the legal obligation that already exists and will eventually have to be paid.  And it satisfies the 14th Amendment edict that the “public debt not be questoined”.  California has done this numerous times, and in fact the federal government itself has been ‘getting by’ since May by doing this exact thing with federal employee retirement funds.

Multiple Americas

My Father was an immigrant, my Mother the daughter of immigrants.  I grew up in different environment from most, I got a lot of Old World wisdom at the dinner table.  Some has stuck, some I’ve moved beyond, but one thing I know for sure.  There have always been multiple “Americas”, meaning multiple cultures existing together within the borders of America.

In the past there were strong cultural impediments, and even laws, that kept people from different cultures separate.  Most of those cultural impediments have weakened or fallen.  And the laws have been repealed.  But the habits of culture do linger sometimes, even after the actual barriers themselves are removed.  So America remains a nation, like many other nations, that is host to multiple cultures within our borders.  I don’t know how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ this is, it just seems to be a fact.

And a new fact is emerging.  Like some sort of protozoa, we are dividing in yet a new way.  We are dividing into the reasonably prosperous and the hopelessly impoverished.

The first America resembles a freer, more diverse, more energetic version of a northern European social democracy.  Oh, say Sweden or Germany.  In this America live the state governments, who are struggling but who are figuring out how to make their finances work.  Also in this America are the corporations, who have dug themselves out of a huge hole, remade themselves into profitable and diverse operations, who continue to innovate and lead markets, and who have very strong balance sheets and large cash reserves to weather any catastrophe.  Finally, this America is populated, roughly speaking, by the socioeconomic upper 2/3rds of Americans.

The second America resembles a slightly more prosperous, but also more violent and dangerous version of Greece, perhaps Belarus is a better analogy.  Two groups populate this second, dreary, cheerless America.  First and foremost, the federal government resides in Alternate America.  Unlike the state governments, the finances of the federal government are a shambles.  No other developed nation has such enormous levels of debt combined with even far greater unfunded liabilities compounded by a government culture utterly lacking in discipline or responsibility.  And joining our federal government in this Alternate America is the, roughly speaking, socioeconomic lower 1/3rd of America.

So there you have it.  In closing, I want to circle back to the culture references I started with.  The cool, but often ignored thing about socioeconomic mobility is that it’s not just “upward mobility”.  It works just as well in the opposite direction, resulting in “downward mobility”.  In motorcycle riding and racing there’s a very useful saying, most important to keep in mind when you’re in an emergency situation: “You’ll go where you look”.  If you look at the rock in the road, you’ll hit the rock in the road.  If you look at the clear path to safety, that’s where you’ll go.

Recent socioeconomic trends in America are extremely daunting in that respect.  In the past, the broad middle class looked to and emulated the behaviors of the upper class.  Recent research indicates that today, the broad middle class looks to and emulates the behaviors of the lower class.  You’ll go where you look.  The cultural and legal barriers to individual freedom to decide are either gone, or they are so low they can easily be stepped over.  There is a culture of prosperity in America, there is a culture of poverty in America.  It won’t be fair, and it won’t be easy, and the outcomes will never be perfectly equal, but Americans do get to choose.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Marriage, Church and State

There’s a giant debate swirling about the subjects of marriage, church, and state right now, so I’ll tell you the real truth.  By the numbers.  And it’s really quite simple.

First, marriage is a religious sacrament.  It has been for many thousands of years, long before the United States, and long before there were governments we would recognize as such.  Marriage is a religious affair.

For almost as long as there has been marriage, there have been states (sovereigns) and those states have been in an endless struggle for power and control with the forces of capital, religion, and the family.  The struggle reached its pinnacle in the early 20th Century in the USSR.  The Soviet government outlawed and confiscated all capital and religion, and nearly outlawed the family.  Of course, because they overstepped in all three areas, they failed spectacularly, and collapsed with a crash.

Marriage, being a very ancient sacrament, is very important to people.  It’s also important to society, because it performs three essential missions.  It supports procreation, this is how humanity produces the next generation.  It reduces, if not eliminates, the deadly violence associated with conflict over scarce available female mating partners.  And it enhances the stability of the two parent family so conducive to raising productive and law-abiding members of society.

So for the state to come to monopolize “marriage” is a major coup for that sovereign.  This has happened in many countries around the world, but not quite in the United States.  But what the governments of other countries do is not “marriage”, it is a legal union.  Those governments, and their people, use the term “marriage” because, from its ancient religious roots that term confers a legitimacy and majesty that is far beyond the reach of government officials.  So they snitch the term.  And the people, genuinely desiring the legitimacy and majesty of what religion offers, but being denied that by the power-mad state, go along with this charade (since they have no choice).

So referring to what the state does to join people in legal union as “marriage” is simply an artifact of the archaic, and now obsolete accommodation between Kings and Cardinals.

In the United States, our Founders did something unheard of at the time: they separated Church and State.  There is no established religion in the United States, no church tax, no government record keeping of church membership.  Congress shall pass no law regarding the establishment of religion.  That wording, in my very carefully considered view, forbids the federal government from performing or condoning the performance of the religious sacrament of marriage for anyone, any couple, anywhere, any time.

No government at any level of the United States has any business being involved with “marriage”.  If the government chooses to recognize a religious “marriage” as equivalent to a legal union, so be it, there is no Constitutional problem with that.  Prior generations have had their responsibilities toward forming a more perfect union, today this is ours.  It is time to get government out of the business of marriage and get them to establish a Constitutional institution, free of and separate from religion, that is available to everyone as specified in the law.

If folks want to get “married” in a “church”, and if the state (sovereign) chooses to accept that as a legal ceremony, that is a separate and uncontroversial issue.

Earlier generations fought much harder fights to perfect this union, if we cannot so perfect this union in our time, then we pass this festering problem to our children.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Norway and the United States

First and foremost, my thoughts and prayers go to the people of Norway in the wake of the tragic terror attacks they have endured.  If a comparable tragedy were to happen in the United States, it would leave almost six thousand Americans dead.  What Norway has suffered is twice what the US did on 9/11.  Again, my most sincere condolences and prayers to the Norwegian people.

Now, to the reaction here in the United States.  Shame on Americans who use this tragedy as an opportunity and excuse to post their vitriolic hatred toward their own country.  The people who post the most vile accusations toward their own country are the problem they decry.  The people who draw the most unfavorable conclusions about America and make the most damning accusations toward their fellow Americans are the reason that America is becoming such a coarser, less pleasant, less civic and less civil place to live.

I do not encourage you to do so, but if you insist on reading some of the incendiary comments by Americans against America that I refer to, here is one source.

If you go to places in the United States where there are high concentrations of citizens of Norwegian ancestry, you will find socioeconomic conditions more similar to those in Norway than in much of the rest of America.  Do I think that Norwegian cultural is better than what passes for American culture?  Not necessarily, but I do know for sure that they are different.  It isn’t the country and government of Norway that makes it what it is.  It is Norwegian socioeconomic culture that makes the place where they live what it is.

North Dakota has 3.2% unemployment, a booming economy, median income well above the national average, a murder rate less than 1/3rd the national average, and the population is 31% of Norwegian ancestry.

I guess I write this because I  do get discouraged at the hateful, dependent, selfish, needy, greedy attitude that so many private Americans are so free to express nowadays.  “I want mine” is met by chants of “I want yours”.  So many of us gaze jealously at those places that appear to be paradisiacal.  But instead of looking in the mirror and seeing our own failings, we blame our fellow Americans in  the most scathing, deplorable terms possible.

America is different from other countries.  Other countries are largely shaped by their ethnic and national identities, and by their history.  In America, this nation of our is what we make of it.  If we want it to be more like some place else, then we simply need to start behaving like the people do in that paradisiacal place we aspire to be.  Wealth starts by saving and investing, wealth never starts by spending.

I wish I had an easy, cheery, less burdensome message for America, but there is no easy road to get to where we want to go.  That is no reason to give up on America.  And for those who have given up, please move aside because there are people who want to continue moving forward.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America.

A Google ‘Docs’ convert, I am!

Before I retired, we employees had an arrangement whereby we could purchase a full, complete version of Microsoft Office Enterprise for $20, for personal use at home.  I felt exceptionally fortunate and took advantage of that offer.  I got everything, I mean everything that Microsoft offers for that $20.

Now I’m retired and the world has moved on and I can’t buy MS Office Enterprise for $20 any longer.  And truth to tell, I’m kind of sick of it anyway, since they made the menu changes in ‘07.  All the muscle memory keyboard shortcuts I learned through the years are … out the window?  So I was looking around for an alternative.

I looked at Open Office.  Nah, it seems like for less money than MS Office I get a lesser product, with no real advantages.

Since I have a Google account, I thought I’d give Google Docs a try.  You can find this service, I hesitate to call it a product, at docs.google.com.  At first, I’ll admit, I was pretty skeptical and came to this with lowered expectations.  What kind of office product could they deliver through a browser?  What if I wanted to write in a remote location, where an Internet connection wasn’t available?  What could I do with any documents I created?

I am now a convert to Google Docs.  I find, first, that I never actually take my netbook to the lake and type while looking at the water.  Our connection here at home is a fairly mediocre 1MBps DSL connection, the kind where the little video windows on YouTube often stutter … you know.  The user experience on Google Docs is flawless, it’s as responsive as my local copy of MS Office.  The functionality is just fine, everything I need and very little of the stuff that I (and most everyone else) don’t use, want, or need.

Google Docs offers word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and a bunch of other stuff.  It also provides a browser based document management interface.  And obviously, being Web-based, your entire collection of documents is available from any computer, anywhere, that you can use to log onto the Internet.  And GDocs offers ‘sharing’ through direct collaboration or email.  No more thumb drives!  No more converting file formats!  If your collaborator has an Internet connection, you’re in business.

And no more worries about backing up important files, I let Google worry about that.  I don’t worry about product updates, I let Google worry about that.  I don’t fret about losing my CD or misplacing the ‘key’.  My life is so much better now, I sing for joy!  (Slight exaggeration there, but I do get so tickled when I find something that is “just so”).

For non-corporate users who need a word processor, spreadsheet, perhaps presentations and a few other office tools, I strongly recommend Google Docs as a totally portable, cross-platform alternative to any traditional ‘office’ product.  For you corporate users, you’ll need to convince your Zombie IT People that GDocs is a good thing for your company, unless you work at Microsoft or Facebook, in which case the company put a stapler on your desk for a reason.  On a five star scale, I give GDocs 11 stars.  Absolutely brilliant!

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America.

Re. Hash.

Here in America, as of July 2011, it’s all about the economy.  Since I have new information, and almost nobody else is getting it, I’ll rehash.  This is not your father’s recession.  To simplify things for the sake of getting through a lot of facts to the underlying meaning of things:

Modern economics began in 1929.  In the Soviet Union, Lenin and his guys were working the Five Year plan thing, and propagandizing tremendous successes.  The world’s first, centrally planned and managed, utterly scientific economy was turning a poverty stricken peasant culture into a paradise for the working person.

Meanwhile, our stock market crashed, everyone else’s stock market crashed, our economies froze up, our banks failed, and things in general didn’t look to good for capitalism.  At least not anything like the kind of capitalism that preceded The Crash.  And for sure, not good compared to the overwhelming successes coming out of the Soviet Union.

So then we elected FDR, and then he listened to John Maynard Keynes, and we tried borrowing and spending to “stimulate” the economy.  And after four years of borrowing and spending, and amassing a debt that frightened the sober and responsible politicians and public of the day, we tried backing off on the spending.  And the economy immediately crashed back to Earth.  This led FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury to his famous words of despair in 1939:

“We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. After eight years we have just as much unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot. – U.S. Secretary Henry Morgenthau. . . May 1939.”

So we did a slow-motion stumble into WWII.  And the industrial and military demands of a full scale global conflagration finally put America back to work, rebuilt our industrial plant, and left us with a crushing debt that we could never have repaid and would have crippled us for decades (post-War Great Britain).  Except that the misfortune of the rest of the world, their industry and agriculture in smoking ruins, was our salvation.  Operating without foreign competition, American industry could not avoid becoming the most prosperous in the world.  And we did, and we thought it would just go on and on forever.

By 1970, the rest of the world was well on its way to rebuilding, while America was trying to fight a war in Viet Nam and fund an expensive new social welfare system at the same time.  More or less without raising taxes to pay for it.  Besides our deteriorating relative economic situation, the soul and spirit of America were shattered between Nov 22nd, 1963 and Aug 9th, 1974.  In the period from John F Kennedy’s assassination and Richard M Nixon’s resignation, something deep and elemental in the soul of America turned from what had been good and outward and forward looking, into a perverted version that was bad and inward and backward looking.

I personally attribute most of this process of perversion on the irrational and undiscerning anti-Viet Nam movement from the Left, and the unthinkingly reflexive defensive posture from the Right.  We are still locked in those poses.  But that was only one of several processes of perversion that occurred during that time.  Less heralded, but no less perverse, was President Nixon making the decision to unilaterally take America off the gold standard.  As is my theme in life, the details become almost irrelevant trees while the forest is plainly obvious to any who would look.  By 1974, America was no longer what it had been in 1963.

By the time that James Carter was leaving the White House, American prosperity was fully and truly an unsustainable illusion.  But let me divert for a moment….

I was listening to Ali Velshi on CNN this Sunday and I am beginning to hear pundits edging toward what I have been saying for some time.  In his show this Sunday, one of the talking heads stated the obvious: in the past 30 years, American industrial output has gone UP by 100%, but American industrial employment is DOWN by 30%.  Hah!  There you go.  Industrial automation has led to increased productivity, and in the face of constant demand, increased productivity always kills jobs.  The means of wealth creation has been shifting from the labor of humans to the output of capital investments.  Labor is producing less wealth, while capital is producing more wealth.  Do I need to explain why more wealth is accumulating to capital, and that labor is less well compensated than before?

So anyway, to get back to President Carter, he was followed by Ronald Reagan.  And this is where the most modern era began.  Today, in 2011, the only people who disagree with what President Reagan did with the economy are people who don’t understand what he did.  Having no clue what else to do, he began trying to get money into the economy to stimulate demand.  Classic Keynesian deficit stimulus spending stuff.  Progressives don’t like Reagan because they want their deficit stimulus spending to be dispensed in a different way, but you can always count on a Progressive to know exactly what they want from the government, and who they expect to pay for it.

Under Reagan’s somewhat innovative Keynesian deficit stimulus spending the federal debt took off on the trajectory that has brought us to the ruination we face today.  It sort of worked, as this plan did for FDR from 1932-1936.  Reagan’s successor, GHW Bush tried playing out FDR’s 3rd and 4th terms by taking us to war.  That worked, but it didn’t last long enough, we didn’t lose enough ships and airplanes and tanks and jeeps, and we didn’t destroy the entire industrial capacity of Europe and Japan.  So by 1992 things crashed back to Earth.  And Bill Clinton got elected.

Bill Clinton is equal parts smart and clever.  That’s a hard combination to beat, but he managed to beat himself anyway.  In 1994 he lost the Congress to the Republicans, which turned out to be a curse in disguise.  Because with a smarter, but less clever, Newt Gingrich wielding the actual reins of power, the nation was led to attempt a path to prosperity that had not been purposefully tried by the federal government before.  Newt and Bill took the nation toward a “wealth effect” bubble in the stock market of HISTORIC proportions.

This bubble, the DotCom bubble, did result in windfall revenues and a temporarily (and artificially) balanced budget, but when it burst in 2000, it blew the whole stock market and the economy with it (since most of that apparent ‘prosperity’ was based on hollow equity values).

So George Bush resorted to more deficit stimulus spending, tax rebates, and exhortations to “Go shopping!”.  To this day, GWB’s antics provide grist for ridicule, but all he was doing was continuing the prior decades’ pattern of the federal government, enabled by the voting population, trying to prop up a hollow economy.  And then Bush took us to war, combining Keynesian deficit stimulus spending AND war.  But it was to no avail, the American economy moribundly refused to be stimulated.  So looking back on his predecessor’s success with creating a stock market bubble, GWB and the Congress conspired to create a new bubble, in housing this time.  It just seemed so unfair that only people with actual jobs and decent credit ratings could own homes….

This was a terribly dangerous strategy to attempt, and it shows the depths of despair among those who knew what was really going on.  And it worked almost as well as the Gingrich/Clinton stock market bubble.  But when it blew up, it did far more damage and took down the entire financial structure of the nation.  Only massive public intervention saved the situation from utter collapse, but that intervention was so artlessly done that it left a situation of zombie banks and assetholes we are no closer to resolving than we were in 2009.

Which brings us to the Summer of 2011.  This might be remembered as the year that America faced the music.  We really have no choice.  Our ability to generate wealth is both relatively diminished and highly concentrated.  We are going to have a very hard time putting together anything that prior generations would consider a “recovery”.  Our public and private debt (from thirty years of Keynesian deficit stimulus spending) is so staggering that it nobody even wants to talk about it.  If you think you can bear a glimpse, just take a peek (be ready to look away quickly): http://www.usdebtclock.org/

There are two things America must face if we are to pass to our children the opportunity to be independent and prosperous.  First, we must face up to our current situation.  There is insufficient demand for the products output by American workers, we are under a mountain of debt, the means by which wealth is created and distributed through society have changed.  Second, we must face up to the fact that past politics, past identities, and past policies don’t work and in fact have made our current situation much worse.  Progressive vs TeaParty, Republican vs Democrat, “borrow and spenders” vs “budget balancers”, these are all the classifications of failure.

If we don’t face our actual situation, and come up with good outward and forward looking solutions, then America’s future is in peril.  I am not optimistic, but I don’t quit.  I buy American, a dollar at a time I will create jobs for my family, friends, and neighbors.  I spread this message on a daily basis, particularly to the bitterly partisan and cynical.  I don’t despair, but I don’t know of a better alternative, either.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Personal honor

The current situation in New York City with the Frenchman, former head of the International Monetary Fund, a fellow by the name of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is this week’s most teachable moment.

First, why do French mothers give their sons names that belong to girls?  Okay, forget it, we’ll move on.  To that teachable moment.

The prosecutor’s case against “DSK” is falling apart because of the increasingly documented lack of credibility of the woman who was allegedly attacked.  The prosecutor has notified the defense of several times and circumstances where the woman lied on official documents.  Because of this, I (along with everyone else) am presuming, the prosecutor has agreed to release “DSK” on his own recognizance.  This is a dramatic change from the rather Draconian control and confinement measures previously implemented.  This creates this week’s “moment”.

Is “DSK” innocent, much less likable?  To the first, “no”, and to the second, “definitely not”.  Whether he’s convicted of anything or not, he acted like a dirt bag.  Even if the woman begged him to have a sexual encounter, he is married.  It doesn’t even matter if his wife approves, or even arranged this.  He is a very public man and he set a hideous example.  So nothing said here will in any way excuse or rehabilitate “DSK”.

Now, to the woman, her history of lying, and the impending collapse of the prosecutor’s case.  Do bad things happen to honest people?  Yes.  Do bad things happen to dishonest people, even when they haven’t been dishonest.  Yes.  Does a person have to be perfect, with a flawless record, to be taken seriously, even believed, when they make an accusation?  No, they do not.  And yet, it appears, this woman’s prior dishonesty is unhinging the prosecutor’s case?  Is this right, much less fair?  Yes, it is.

Every serious adult guards their “word” jealously.  A serious adult will “take the Fifth” rather than try to shade the truth.  It was said that a man’s word is his bond.  Today, anyone who aspires to be a serious adult must learn this same lesson.  A time will come, with no way to know when or how or why, when the only thing a person has to offer in their own defense is their “word”.  When that moment comes, the human survival instinct in each of us will take over and we will make a judgment whether to believe the person, or not.  Anyone in the way way back who was bad at making this judgment does not have living descendants populating the world today.  Being able to accurately judge whether to trust a person or not is a skill that is strongly correlated to survival.

In making this judgment, our most reliable indicator is past performance.  I’ve had people lie to my face, plead for trust, promise the world, and none of it matters.  I have seen enough liars, and enough honest people, that I will trust my own judgment, and I will not be persuaded by the most elaborate presentations.  If a person is honest with me over normal events, I am inclined to trust that person.  If a person is dishonest, or even marginal, in everyday affairs, then I am strongly inclined to distrust them when all they have is their word.

For every person, know this without a doubt.  The time will come when your past is all you have to rely on.  You will face the most outrageous accusations, with no positive way to absolve yourself.  When that moment comes, what you will have is your “word”, and the result you get will depend on that.  “Trick me once, shame on you.  Trick me twice, shame on me.”

There are convicts who are innocent, and there are judges who are crooks.  But the numbers make betting on that a losing proposition.  I know the kind of scrutiny that police officers go through, and the chances of that badge concealing a dirt bag are very very slim.  It happens, but it is the glaring exception.  People live their lives, they reap their results, they are achieve a station in society, and the wise among us guard that reputation with all we have.

G’day, all, and may God continue to bless America.